Culture, Resistance And Action: Hip Hop’s Relationship To Revolution (@ApexZero00)

 From the moment it arrived here from the US, hav­ing surge out of the Bronx and trans­mit­ting itself across the globe, Hip Hop cul­ture in the UK began to cre­ate a unique iden­tity for itself. This iden­tity, our style, our look or sound, is a product of the diverse inter­na­tion­al music­al, artist­ic and cul­tur­al influ­ences exist­ing in Bri­tain, them­selves products of the many dia­spora and work­ing class com­munit­ies cre­ated by Bri­tains bar­bar­ic and inhu­mane colo­ni­al his­tory. Res­ist­ance, which was a con­stant occur­rence through­out imper­i­al his­tory, has always been a defin­ing prin­ciple of Hip Hop and is a com­mon thread that runs through­out a lot of Hip Hop born in the UK. Like many people of my gen­er­a­tion, Hip Hop was the medi­um through which I became con­sciously aware of numer­ous glob­al soci­olo­gic­al issues that were already affect­ing my life. Hip Hop intro­duced me to some of my greatest inspir­a­tions, like Mal­colm X and Mar­cus Gar­vey, and helped to mould a sense of pride and of iden­tity. As a 15-year-old try­ing to deal with being ‘mixed race’ and of Afric­an des­cent with­in the whirl­pool of con­cealed racism and con­stant dis­crim­in­a­tion that is grow­ing up in Lon­don, my con­scious­ness was greatly enhanced by listen­ing to groups like dead prez and Wu-Tang. Since ⁹⁄₁₁, a large num­ber of my gen­er­a­tion became engaged in learn­ing and research­ing Marx­ist or revolu­tion­ary the­or­ies, and began to ques­tion polit­ics and politi­cians dir­ectly because of the music of artists like Immor­tal Tech­nique, Klash­nekkoff and Skinny­man. As a res­ult, there has been a huge sprout­ing of not only polit­ic­ally and socially aware, but polit­ic­ally and socially engaged Hip Hop grow­ing out of the UK. Groups and emcees like Iron Bray­dz, Triple Dark­ness, Cax­ton Press, Lowkey and Logic (People’s Army) and my own teams, First and Last and The Pan­theonz of Zenn-la, are just a few. Artists like these deal with a wide range of issues — social depriva­tion; expos­ing the exploit­at­ive nature of our social sys­tem; encour­aging unity and organ­isa­tion of poorer and oppressed people with the goal of an engaged battle against the estab­lish­ment; com­bat­ing the self-destruct­ive viol­ence that Afric­an des­cend­ants are coerced into by our envir­on­ments; the treat­ment of Muslims and Islam in con­tem­por­ary Bri­tain; retell­ing and unearth­ing hid­den his­tor­ies; high­light­ing oppres­sion around the globe such as the plight and battle of the Palestini­an and Tamil people and nations. These are just a few examples.

    This aware­ness and engage­ment depicts what many revolu­tion­ary the­or­ist and prac­ti­tion­ers, includ­ing Huey P. New­ton and V.I. Len­in, described as one of the most fun­da­ment­al and neces­sary dimen­sions in cre­at­ing the shift from people being oppressed and exploited by a cap­it­al­ist soci­ety to genu­inely fight­ing against the estab­lish­ment respons­ible for this exploit­a­tion; the rais­ing of the con­scious­ness of our people to the real­ity of and reas­ons for our present con­di­tion. This is some­thing that I can proudly say that Hip Hop in the UK, as a cul­ture, is and has been a part of for decades.

One of the best depic­tions of Hip Hop becom­ing engaged in com­munity rela­tions, and giv­ing a plat­form for this polit­ic­ally express­ive Hip Hop is the Speak­ers Corner move­ment. Foun­ded by DJ Snuff, DJ and Graf­fiti Artist Steaz and the emcee Man­age among oth­ers, and named after the plat­form for free speech in Hyde Park, Speak­ers Corner began as a Hip Hop event in Brix­ton that provided a sim­il­ar plat­form for emcees and musi­cians to express them­selves openly. It quickly became the spot to reach to get your art out, to meet like-minded people and to dis­cuss cur­rent issues. Speak­ers Corner has now tran­scen­ded its roots as a music­al plat­form to become an organ­isa­tion­al and pro­mo­tion­al tool for com­munity move­ments. Recent examples of this are the role that act­iv­ists from Speak­ers Corner and it’s closely related affil­i­ate The People’s Army (foun­ded by Logic, Lowkey and Big cakes, among oth­ers) played in the protests against the murder of Smi­ley Cul­ture by the police in 2011. The act­iv­ists, many of them artists, helped Smiley’s fam­ily to organ­ise and pro­mote meet­ings and protests demand­ing justice. Through the same pro­cess they cre­ated plat­forms for debate with­in the Lam­beth Com­munity to try and find answers on how to deal with the prob­lem of con­stant police bru­tal­ity with­in the bor­ough, the city and the country.

These events depict the power of Hip Hop to give a voice to the strug­gling, to give a weapon to those who are being attacked. This is the reas­on why many of the people who gave the best ana­lys­is of the insur­rec­tion sparked by the murder of Mark Dug­gen by police in 2011 — at least in the main­stream media — where UK Hip Hop artists. Amidst con­stant talk of ‘wonton destruc­tion’, wide­spread con­dem­na­tion and out­right racism, with the likes of Dav­id Starky claim­ing the ‘riots’ began because “whites have become like blacks”, it was Reveal, UK Hip Hop emcee, who was on News­night expos­ing the real­ity of inter-racial, inter-class, intergen­er­a­tion­al anger and ali­en­a­tion as the biggest factors for the viol­ence. The most insight­ful ana­lys­is came from a man close to the events, Stafford Scott, whose com­munity work in Tot­ten­ham stretches back to the upris­ings of the 1980’s.  I’m sure that Hip Hop has had at least some influ­ence on his men­tal­ity and out­look on social justice, espe­cially as he has since been involved in many pub­lic dis­cus­sions on the events with Hip Hop artists like Akala and Wancee, the lat­ter often per­forms tracks ded­ic­ated to his friend Mark Dug­gan at pub­lic meet­ings and demon­stra­tions. Stafford Scott was one of the few people giv­en air­time who deman­ded that people recog­nised and remembered that the issue that sparked the viol­ence was yet anoth­er murder of a per­son at the hands of the Brit­ish police, and that they were again of lower/working class and of Afric­an des­cent. He rightly emphas­ised the con­nec­tion between the events in Bri­tain and the great chain of anger, dis­con­tent and viol­ent upris­ing that is being felt all over the world. He also exposed the hypo­crisy of MP’s to label their own country’s viol­ence as ‘need­less thug­gery’ while aid­ing viol­ent upris­ings abroad with mil­it­ary sup­port. These sen­ti­ments were echoed through­out the under­ground UK Hip Hop scene, with numer­ous artists post­ing tracks, dis­cus­sions and videos online in the hours, days, weeks and now years after the events took place.

It is this, the loc­al being equated to and defined with­in the glob­al con­text which, more than any­thing, depicts the nature of Hip Hop to me. Hip Hop holds up a mir­ror to the soci­et­ies it emerges from. It shows everything — the beauty, the com­munity, the love and cre­ativ­ity, but also the depriva­tion, the poverty, the crime and the death. Hip Hop depicts the need for an addic­tion to money with­in a cap­it­al­ist soci­ety and the immense mater­i­al­ism which that cre­ates, but also amp­li­fies the voice of the power­less, the res­ist­ance of the oppressed and the emer­gence, like Mal­colm from his pris­on cell, of a force that will no longer accept its con­di­tion now that its eyes are open to its real­ity. Just as the UK has its own style of Hip Hop cul­ture, made up of people from all races and back­grounds, it has its place with­in the glob­al move­ment of Hip Hop, as does France, Japan, Palestine – any­where that embraces Hip Hop cul­ture. In just the same way, the struggle of the exploited people of the UK, of all races and back­grounds, which has its own issues and obstacles to over­come, is part of the glob­al struggle for a revolu­tion that con­sists of mul­tiple battles against injustice, oppres­sion and exploit­a­tion; a revolu­tion which if com­pleted suc­cess­fully will raise the stand­ard of liv­ing for human­ity as a whole.

Along­side these many pos­it­ives, and per­haps because of the power that it can invoke, there are also reas­ons why I am crit­ic­al of Hip Hop’s role with­in this revolu­tion. Firstly, since Hip Hop cul­ture came into con­tact with the music industry, that same mir­ror­ing effect inher­ent in Hip Hop has often been manip­u­lated into a self-destruct­ive force. As any­one with a his­tory in Hip Hop will know, Hip Hop has (at least on the sur­face) become gradu­ally split between pur­pos­ive and pro­duct­ive music and art, and (mostly) music that does little but gen­er­ate large amounts of money for cor­por­a­tions and a few indi­vidu­als while con­trib­ut­ing to the self-destruct­ive and divis­ive influ­ences at work on our com­munit­ies and our people. This split has nev­er been big­ger or more obvi­ous. There was a time, at least for me, when many artists would encap­su­late both sides of this void, mak­ing money from music with a par­tially self-destruct­ive or mater­i­al­ist­ic mes­sage, but would often com­bine this with mes­sages of the need for com­munity and for rebel­lion, if not out­right revolu­tion or res­ist­ance. Today, there are few who can claim to do this, with the vast major­ity of power­fully lyr­ic­al emcees strug­gling to make a liv­ing or to get their music out to lar­ger audi­ences, while far less tal­en­ted but bet­ter con­nec­ted rappers/pop sing­ers, who are per­haps more will­ing or are coerced into ‘doing what sells’ clean up yet give noth­ing. From a UK per­spect­ive, with music, as with most art, any­thing clearly and out­right anti-estab­lish­ment is cen­sored and out­caste — des­pite the media and government’s insist­ence that free­dom of speech is com­mon prac­tice. A massive example of this is the cen­sor­ship of Mic Right­eous on the BBC, who while free­styl­ing had the line ‘Free Palestine’ dubbed over — by a sta­tion that con­stantly allows emcees to talk about mur­der­ing their own people, and a cor­por­a­tion who will hap­pily expose little girls to Rihanna and Miley Cyr­us’ glor­i­fic­a­tion of fet­ish sex at 8.30 in the morn­ing on their way to primary school. This is just one example. The polit­ic­al, or rather anti-polit­cal thread that runs through much of the UK’s under­ground Hip Hop has either hindered or saved UK Hip Hop from main­stream media — per­haps both. Hindered from cre­at­ing a US style suc­cess­ful industry, and saved from becom­ing overly exploited by the mass media machine. To me, this echoes the the­ory Theodore Adorno who, para­phras­ing, said that art is one of the only out­lets in con­tem­por­ary West­ern soci­ety for genu­ine polit­ic­al expres­sion, and that art forms that truly con­vey a strong polit­ic­al mes­sage oppos­ing the nature of cap­it­al­ism are those which are the most dif­fi­cult to com­modi­fy and sell.

Secondly, des­pite Hip Hop’s pos­i­tion as a chan­nel through which people can ignite social change, the shift from self-expres­sion to genu­ine action is not hap­pen­ing enough, and not just in Hip Hop. Too often in recent times, when people have real­ised the reas­ons why there must be a change to the social order, they feel con­tent to only express this real­isa­tion through music or art. Art can help, and as I have said, is neces­sary and import­ant, but noth­ing will actu­ally change if artist­ic expres­sion is all we are doing as artists or as people to change our col­lect­ive situ­ation. In the words of Mao Tse Tung “if you know the the­ory and meth­ods of revolu­tion, you must take part in revolu­tion”. Many people are using Hip Hop as a plat­form to label them­selves as revolu­tion­ar­ies or free­dom fight­ers while doing noth­ing else but make tracks or listen to them. They know there’s a prob­lem, they know revolu­tion is the answer, but they don’t then pro­gress to learn­ing or cre­at­ing the­or­ies and meth­ods of cre­at­ing this solu­tion, nev­er mind actu­ally tak­ing part in the phys­ic­al pro­cess of a social revolution.

I count myself with­in this cri­ti­cism; no mat­ter what you are doing, you can always do more. In the UK, like many West­ern and West­ern­ised coun­tries, we may not be in a pos­i­tion right now to have the neces­sary full scale revolu­tion that is the only true answer to chan­ging the soci­ety we live in. How­ever, para­phras­ing Che Guevara (and I am aware of exist­ing issues with­in ‘van­guard­ist’ argu­ment) we can act as a cata­lyst to make the neces­sary con­di­tions mani­fest. Music and art can help push towards this goal, but it will not be enough on its own. Being out in the real world, mak­ing a change in your com­munity, sup­port­ing protests, dam­aging the estab­lish­ment – all of these will help. How­ever, one of the most import­ant things we need and are lack­ing is a new, con­crete revolu­tion­ary the­ory of prac­tice; a mater­i­al out­line of the soci­ety we wish to cre­ate that can replace the decay­ing cor­rupt one that is in place right now. Although, as Frantz Fan­on writes, the soci­ety we wish to make must be cre­ated through the act of fight­ing the struggle, we must strive to cre­ate a the­or­et­ic­al basis to work towards, even if it is moul­ded, edited and shaped as the struggle unfolds. This will give us both a genu­ine uni­fy­ing factor for all the squab­bling fac­tions with­in this battle, and will offer a real altern­at­ive to life as we live it. And it must be new.

“The con­crete prob­lem we find ourselves up against is not that of a choice, cost what it may, between social­ism and capitalism…as they have been defined by men of oth­er con­tin­ents and of oth­er ages”.

Fan­on wrote this in the age of decol­on­isa­tion dir­ectly for people of the so-called “third world”. How­ever, it is as true now as it was then, even for the oppressed people with­in the bor­ders of neo-colo­ni­al and/or imper­i­al nations. Although it may look dif­fer­ent from place to place, the oppres­sion we face today is glob­al. There­fore, just as the Hip Hop we cre­ate to res­ist and defy it is expressed in dif­fer­ent ways depend­ing on loc­a­tion and cul­ture, so too must the drive and meth­ods used to genu­inely des­troy it. Until we have this mater­i­al out­line, cre­ated as we cre­ate our art, inspired from the struggle that we exper­i­ence daily, we must strive to per­son­i­fy the ideals that we want to see in the world, and then strive to cre­ate them with­in the world around us. Hip Hop music and art, like any art form, can be a part of this, but can nev­er replace genu­ine revolu­tion­ary action.

* This art­icle is an edited and updated ver­sion of the lec­ture I (Apex) gave at LSE for the event ‘The Spir­ituals of Hip Hop’ with Has­an Salaam and Lupa Moretti.

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@ApexZero00